


A Hundred Miles from Yesterday Night

by Montresor



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: A little bit hurt/comfort, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Platonic Hand-Holding, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 21:37:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12308301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Montresor/pseuds/Montresor
Summary: Two departures. The night Zenyatta leaves the monastery, and the wake of Mondatta's assassination.





	A Hundred Miles from Yesterday Night

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a fun little one-off speculating on a more peaceful separation between Zenyatta and the Shambali. I'm not sure if Genji was actively in Zenyatta's tutelage after Mondatta was assassinated, because the Overwatch timeline is about as messy as my understanding of it. Hopefully it's not too far-fetched to suggest. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! If you like it, and hope for more like this, or in this fandom, feel free to let me know. You can find me on [tumblr](http://finevintagefiction.tumblr.com). I'm in the midst of putting together a portfolio of work, so any comments/prompts/etc you may have, are absolutely welcome. I'll be taking commissions very soon!

Zenyatta knows as soon as he powers on that he will never forget this night. Of course, he cannot forget. Omnics can preserve their memories in perfect detail. Even lost, they can be found again within the Iris. Tonight, however, does not feel selected. Does not feel retrieved. He must remember it. It is just below 0°C in the Shambali monastery, and the village has seen its first snow. It will be some months before they see rhododendrons in bloom again. Zenyatta will see the vibrant pink flowers in his dreams much sooner, and for many months after. He will never fully decipher their significance.  
  
His feet do not touch the floor, and he drifts out of his room as if the wind is simply blowing him along. There is no such current; for once, the air is still in the mountains, and the course of fresh snowflakes from the atmosphere to the ground is undisturbed. If Zenyatta ever breathed, it would condense in these temperatures. Perhaps he might shiver. Having neither reflex, his journey to the shrine is as undisrupted as the snow. When he finds Mondatta awake, and waiting, he wonders if the Iris has summoned them both to look. Zenyatta lets his feet find the stone.  
  
“I am leaving,” he says.  
  
“As am I,” Mondatta answers, almost in an echo. “You are right that we cannot stay here, and hope for understanding to come to us.”  
  
“But we must do more,” Zenyatta protests. “It is not enough to—” Mondatta bows his head, and his deference is humbling enough to silence Zenyatta.  
  
“It is where we must begin,” Mondatta says. “The path bends in different ways for each of us, but we walk, still, in harmony.” He offers his hand, as he has done for so many others, so many lost and frightened and searching for the light of the Iris. Tranquility. Zenyatta fits his hand carefully in Mondatta’s, and knows he cannot leave yet. They have not reached the end of the path.  
  
Together they proceed deeper into the shrine, letting their footsteps echo into the blissful silence. They might have levitated here. They might have gone without a sound, but this is a time to feel the pathway underfoot, to walk until it forks, and only then, depart.  
  
“I am frightened,” Zenyatta admits.  
  
“Of leaving?”  
  
“Of many things. I do not know where I will go. What I will find once I get there? I am afraid,” he continues, “to go into the world alone.”  
  
“Then do not.” Zenyatta’s grip slackens on Mondatta’s hand, but Mondatta holds him fast. “I do not mean not to go. Nor can I go with you. In the Iris…”  
  
“… we are one.” There is a gentle pulse of electromagnetism between them. A warmth, and understanding that fills up that hollow spot that had remained in Zenyatta’s resolve. Mondatta lets go of his hand with a falconer’s acceptance that what he releases may choose never to return. Still, there is a hope. _Fly back to me someday._  
  
“There is something more.” Mondatta breaks the silence only when its time has come. He beckons, and Zenyatta follows him just a little further. The comfort of this companionship could persist a while longer before its inevitable change of form. They walk together again in silent harmony to the shrine’s rear chamber, where Mondatta takes a knee before a nondescript panel in the wall. Another might have questioned then, but Zenyatta feels no need. All things, in time, become apparent. Mondatta’s optics flicker in different configurations before the panel alights and slides free.  
  
“A parting gift,” Mondatta says by way of explanation, “to keep you safe on the path ahead.” Nestled in silk are nine carven orbs, plated gold alloy, reasonable conductivity, but beyond the practical, they are simply beautiful. They were made here, Zenyatta knows, each one a masterpiece, etched by hand by his fellow monks. He lets his fingertips graze along the grooves, feeling the resonance of them. Harmony and Discord.  
  
“These are more than I—” He begins to protest, but Mondatta lifts a hand.  
  
“I know that you will honour them in your travels. Take them, my brother. They are yours.” There is a synchronicity that Zenyatta cannot disprove. The orbs ignite when he reaches for one, this time lifting out of the case, chiming one after the other as they encircle him, at last settling around his neck as if they had always belonged there.  
  
“I begin to understand,” he says, feeling this new weight, the resistance between his body and the orbs. Their faces are unchanging, but another comforting pulse passes between them. Another moment of synchronicity. Mondatta bows his head.  
  
“Then it is truly time for you to depart.”  
  
Zenyatta will return to this moment many times, and wonder what might have been changed by staying. Instead, he leaves Mondatta with his thanks and does not look back.  
  


* * *

  
The disruption in the Iris is so great that it shakes Zenyatta from the depths of his meditation. The orbs of Harmony and Discord chime, wavering in the air. A terrible thing is upon them. A sadness. He is grieving before the word begins to spread.  
  


TEKHARTHA MONDATTA ASSASSINATED DURING SPEECH

  
Murdered. The hatred so often turned towards Omnics is difficult enough to make peace with. So many have died. Many more would suffer. And now Mondatta, too, had been swallowed up by that bottomless hatred. Extinguished like one bright candle in so much darkness. It is difficult to remember the embrace of the Iris when confronted with such a staggering feeling of emptiness. Mondatta has gone where none can reach him, and where he will never see the ugliness that will show itself in the wake of his death. Of course, some fragments still remain, stored within the Iris, and within Zenyatta’s own memory, but it is not as simple as rebuilding the body, retrieving the lost, corrupted data. The grief, as much as it suffocates, is as much a proof as anything that their intelligence is no longer artificial, and that their souls are just as real. Unique, and irreplaceable. There is some comfort, yet, in knowing that that much endures.  
  
“Master?” It is his student that pulls him from his trance before it can turn to rumination. Where some bright lights are extinguished, more bloom into being, seeking guidance. Shimada Genji, without the benefit of levitation, still manages to move in perfect silence. “I am sorry,” he says, “about your brother.”  
  
“All paths meet again, in time.” It is difficult to keep the grief out of the words, and so Zenyatta does not stifle it. He knows that if there is anyone who will understand this feeling, it is Genji, who has experienced this separation in its ugliest form. “Until then, I must continue to work for the peace Mondatta strove toward.”  
  
“Will you return to the monastery?”  
  
“I will not.” Zenyatta is surprised by the immediacy his own adamance. “I have done all that I can there. I must have faith in my brothers and sisters, and trust that they still have faith in me. We must continue to work for a better world.” Under the mask, Genji’s expression is difficult to read, and he has yet to develop a complete grasp of the nuances of Omnic communication. The pulse is faint, but there. Nearly synchronous. It will never occupy the empty place that Mondatta’s destruction has left inside him, but the hurt loses some of its sharpness. He does not need to carry his sorrow alone.  
  
“I am with you, master.”  
  
Zenyatta offers his hand. “We must not abandon the path,” he says. “It bends in different ways for each of us, but we walk, still, in harmony. There is further still to go."


End file.
